West Bengal’s five Assembly constituencies that recorded the highest number of voter deletions during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls were all won by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the 2026 Assembly election, according to Election Commission of India (ECI) data cited by officials.
The finding comes amid a continuing political dispute over whether the voter-roll revision influenced the BJP’s sweeping victory in the state. The data, however, does not by itself establish that SIR altered the result, with the pattern of deletions and electoral outcomes varying considerably across constituencies.
The five constituencies with the highest deletions were Sujapur, Raghunathganj, Samserganj, Ratua and Suti. All are located in Malda and Murshidabad, two districts bordering Bangladesh, and all had been won by the TMC.
Highest deletions concentrated in five TMC seats
The ranking is based on the electoral roll published on February 28, although a substantial number of names were subsequently restored.
Sujapur recorded the largest deletion at that stage, with 1,50,410 names removed. Before the deadline for filing nominations, 1,14,766 of those names were restored.
The other four constituencies in the top five were Raghunathganj, Samserganj, Ratua and Suti. The ECI data used for the comparison excludes Falta, where a repoll was ordered.
At the opposite end of the scale, the five constituencies with the fewest deletions each recorded between 8,254 and 9,309 names being removed, equivalent to roughly 3% to 4% of their respective rolls. All five were eventually won by the BJP.
The contrast, however, does not extend uniformly across the state. Murshidabad is a prominent example. The TMC's tally in the district fell sharply from 20 Assembly seats in 2021 to nine in 2026.
Data does not establish a direct SIR-election link
Officials cautioned against drawing a straightforward conclusion that the SIR process helped one political party win the election.
The wider data shows that constituencies experiencing substantial voter-roll contraction did not uniformly move in one political direction. An analysis published after the election found that, among the 20 constituencies with the highest number of deletions after adjudication, the TMC won 13, while the BJP won six and the Congress one. Separately, in 187 constituencies where more than 5,000 names were deleted, the BJP won or was leading in 119.
Another analysis found that deletions exceeded the 2021 victory margin in 44 constituencies, of which the TMC won 24 and the BJP 20.
A separate seat-level analysis also found that the number of deletions exceeded the eventual winning margin in 95 of the BJP's 207 victories and 44 of the TMC's 80 victories. In Samserganj, for example, 86,977 voters were removed while the TMC retained the seat by 7,587 votes.
These figures illustrate why the size of the deletions alone cannot demonstrate that the SIR changed a particular election result.
Bengal records unprecedented turnout
West Bengal nevertheless produced a striking electoral statistic in 2026. The state recorded a turnout of 93.71%, the highest recorded in any Assembly or Lok Sabha election in India since Independence.
The figure surpassed Tripura's 93.61% turnout in the 2013 Assembly election, which had previously been the national record.
The number of votes cast in Bengal also increased from 2021, despite the electorate being smaller after the roll revision.
The officials cited this turnout while responding to renewed Opposition allegations that India's electoral system was being undermined. They compared recent Assembly election turnout in India with national-election participation in 24 other countries.
On that comparison, West Bengal's 93.71% was higher than the turnout recorded in all 25 countries examined, including Singapore, Australia and Belgium, where voting is compulsory. Puducherry's 91.19% was also higher than Australia's figure, while Assam's 86.33% and Tamil Nadu's 86.03% were above Sweden and Germany.
Kerala's 79.53% was level with Brazil and South Korea. Bihar, which recorded the lowest turnout among the six Indian states compared, at 67.25%, was nevertheless above the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan.
India's turnout in the 2024 Lok Sabha election was 65.79%, placing it around the middle of the international comparison.
The comparison, however, places turnout in Indian Assembly elections against national election turnout in the other countries, rather than comparing like-for-like elections.
Over 90 lakh names removed in Bengal
The ECI has faced sustained criticism over the scale of the electoral-roll revision. According to the figures cited by officials, 90,83,345 names were removed from West Bengal's electoral roll, which had contained around 7.66 crore voters.
The commission has rejected allegations of "vote chori", maintaining that the SIR was necessary to identify and remove ineligible entries and produce an accurate electoral roll.
The official West Bengal election website has subsequently published supplementary inclusion and deletion lists, along with the final SIR roll and constituency-level information, allowing voters and political parties to track changes made after the February 28 publication.
The issue has also generated concerns about the mechanism for restoring names. More than a dozen judges serving on voter tribunals in Bengal have recently raised concerns about the ECI's portal, saying it does not allow them to restore deleted voters through the system. The development has added another layer to the debate over the effectiveness of the appeals process.
Opposition protests over ECI and SIR
The figures have emerged as the INDIA bloc, led by the Congress, and the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) separately continue protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The protests followed a news report that brought certain decisions of the poll panel under scrutiny and suggested that Kumar and the two Election Commissioners had disagreed on several issues.
The Election Commission has said differences among its officers are normal and maintained that its actions were lawful.
The Opposition has also alleged that 13.39 crore voters were disenfranchised during the nationwide SIR exercise.
The ECI has rejected that characterisation. It said 95.40 crore electors were reviewed across the three phases of the exercise and that 13.39 crore were placed in the ASDD category, meaning Absent, Permanently Shifted, Dead or Duplicate, along with some other categories.
According to the latest figures released by the commission, the 13.39 crore figure includes 3.01 crore voters classified as absent or untraceable, 6.30 crore who had permanently shifted, 2.80 crore who were recorded as deceased and 1.02 crore identified as duplicates. Another 0.26 crore fell under other categories.
The commission has stressed that being placed in these categories does not mean every such person was permanently disenfranchised. Eligible electors can seek review and apply for inclusion in the electoral rolls.
BJP accuses Opposition of double standards
The BJP has accused the Opposition of applying what it calls "double standards", arguing that parties question the electoral process when they lose elections but celebrate the same system when results favour them.
The broader evidence from Bengal presents a more complicated picture. While the five constituencies with the largest initial deletions were all won by the TMC, the BJP made major gains in several constituencies with significant roll contraction. At the same time, the TMC retained a number of seats where deletions were numerically much larger than its eventual victory margins.
An analysis published after the election found that constituencies where the electoral roll contracted more during SIR tended, on average, to move further towards the BJP relative to the TMC. However, that statistical relationship does not by itself prove that deletions caused individual electoral outcomes.
The evidence therefore points to a layered impact of the voter-roll revision rather than a simple explanation in which SIR alone determined the 2026 Bengal verdict.